| Title: | Kowloon Generic Romance |
| Episode: | 12: |
| Synopsis | |
| We see a flashback to Dr. Wong's clinic years ago. Miyuki's mother has an appointment and Miyuki and Yulong have come as well. The doctor wishes the mother would take his advice more seriously, but in general we don't learn much about her condition. We see another flashback of Miyuki supervising the demolition of Kowloon. In the present day, Miyuki is summoned by his (adopted) father. The father repeatedly refers to Miyuki as 'Haoran', his natural son. Afterwards the father's personal doctor informs Miyuki that father has been showing signs of dementia since last year and it will only accelerate. Miyuki responds with a mixture of anger and amusement. Yulong goes to the real estate office; he says he is looking for Kudo but takes note of where Kujirai is scheduled to be. Afterwards Miyuki calls him and declares that 'My revenge is over'. Yulong warns him that he thinks Miyuki is being 'swallowed up' by 'this nostalgic Kowloon', which startles Miyuki. Yulong asks him what he'll do now; Miyuki says he doesn't know but Yulong thinks (to himself) that “Now that revenge is out of the picture, all you've got left is... regret”. Gwen tries to make a very important call to Miyuki but gets nothing but a recording. We see a newspaper whose headline reads “Hebinuma Group chairman to retire”. Yulong is using a laptop and looking at the cube above the city. “Can't even delete stuff I made myself”' he says. “It hasn't responded to my instruction to abort. It should have disappeared already, so how come?”. To check a theory of his he tries to call Xiaohei. To his surprise Yaomay answers and demands that he stop bothering Xiaohei. Yulong ('Weasel') recognizes the voice of 'Shell-chan', from the chat room. He assures her that he has no need to kill Kujirai anymore; “The new target is Hajime Kudo” he says. Yulong has realized that this version of Kowloon is a replica from Kudo's memory. He taunts Yaomay, saying he has fooled her into telling him just what he needed to know. Later, Kujirai is at the apartment of the now vanished generic Xiaohei. Yulong confronts her outside and claims to be a developer of Generic Terra and to have “a bunch of information on this Kowloon too”. Yulong pulls a talisman which says TURN BACK off an alley wall. “Is this a message from Hajime Kudo?” he asks Kujirai. She implies that it probably is. “Why is he threatening us?” Yulong asks. “He doesn't want us to know that B—Reiko Kujirai—bought drugs back here, most likely from Hebinuma pharmceutical” she replies. “Oh, the cold medicine that was discontinued” Yulong answers. He says if you took large doses of this stuff you would experience pleasant hallucinations and people started abusing it. But too much could kill you (sounds like Kujirai B killed herself by accident). He says the previous Kowloon was demolished just to cover this up. He offers a sort of explanation of what happened next: "Generic Terra had been an empty shell. But when it resonated with Kudo's regrets, it activated for the first time. Generic Terra, which brings eternal life to humanity--turns out it's a defective product that stores memories but can't output them. We'd prepared vessels, but they were useless. But ... the higher-ups refused to give up. They believed this was a sign that Gene terra could work. The Hebinuma Group then got involved in Kowloon again to investigate". Yulong mentions how it is always summer in Kowloon; Kujirai hadn't noticed this. They find the door where Kujirai B bought her pills, and Yulong does the same. But then he tells Kujirai that he still needs for her to die. "If Kudo's regret is about Reiko Kujirai, then when you, who are irreplaceable to him, are dead, maybe he stops needing Kowloon and it disappears, you know?". Kujirai talks her way out of trouble by insisting that she's not the same Reiko Kujirai as Kudo loved and that she exists for herself, not someone else. Yulong argues that in a worst-case scenario, neither she nor Kudo will be 'saved'. "As long as it's the path I chose, I won't regret it" she says. "Isn't that how life is supposed to be?". Yulong is persuaded to wait and see what happens. He gives Kujirai the bag of pills. "I'm counting on you, Reko-pon!" he says and walks away. Meanwhile, Miyuki walks through Kowloon. He visits the now vacant Wong clinic. He notices something which makes him giggle. Gwen finds him. Miyuki tells him how he agreed to be adopted by the Hebinuma family in exchange for medical treatment his natural mother needed, but how his new father broke his promise and his mother 'died in solitude'. "However, by coming in here I unconsciously made it impossible to carry out my wish (of revenge). Ironic, isn't it? in the eyes of the man I want revenge on, I am now his real son. My presence has become his salvation while i have lost my hometown, my mother, so much of what I loved in vain". Gwen declares that he still loves Miyuki: "I will will follow you no matter where you go, and I'll take you anywhere you want. I promise". Unknown to them, Yulong is listening. Kujirai thinks to herself: "This world is Kudo-san's world. But I am not Reiko Kujirai. Why was I the only one who didn't replicate my counterpart? What does Kudo-san plan to do here? Is he going to leave eventually? Or will he stay here forever?". She comes upon Kudo and asks him if he plans to stay within Kowloon. She shows him the bag of pills, indicating that she knows what happened to Kujirai B. They get into a mild argument. "You know, you were never like this in the summers before" Kudo says. "You were just a symbol of Reiko Kujirai. Why are you like this in this summer?". "How should I know?" she replies. "I wish I did!". "I was confused in the beginning but we managed well" Kudo says. "Close, but not too close. Never moving forward or backward. never beginning and never ending. We've repeated Kowloon's summer like that, haven't we? But since you appeared it feels like something is about to start, and something is about to end. I'm troubled". He thinks for a moment, then says "Oh, that's it. I am troubled". An earthquake-like phenomena begins and Kowloon begins to dissolve. We hear a voice (either Yulong or Xiaohei, I think) saying "Reko-pon, you are strong. But can everyone else be as strong as you are? Can Kudo accept you the way you are?". | |
| Comments | |
| No wonder Miyuki's revenge plot got so little development even as the series nears its end--it is aborted unceremoniously. What was Yulong trying to do with the laptop and the cube? What was he trying to delete, abort and make disappear? Kujirai has figured out a lot more on her own than we were told—she seems to have concluded that this version of Kowloon 'belongs to' Kudo, that Talismans are messages from Kudo and that he doesn't want anyone to know that Kujirai B was taking drugs (cold medicine?). I find it hard to believe that an entire suburb of Hong Kong was demolished to cover-up a drug scandal; even if this is the only place it was sold, there must be numerous people still alive who know about the side effect of these pills. The whole story started to fall apart at this point and my confidence that we'd get a fantastic ending began to melt away. So, somehow Kudo's regrets 'resonated' with the Gene Terra system and a whole alternate reality city, which some people (also with 'regrets' of their own) could touch and feel, was created? We need much more detail than this to take this explanation seriously. In general, I was frustrated with the conclusion. Too much is left unexplained! What exactly did Gene Terra do? What did the cube hovering over Kowloon do? Did Kudo shake off his personal regret by realizing that he was 'troubled', thus depriving Kowloon of its reason for existing? And perhaps most important of all, will Kujirai continue to exist after Kowloon vanishes? The ending could have been much worse, but I was counting on plausible answers for all sorts of questions that had been raised over the course of this series, and I didn't get many. Much to my surprise, the ANN review says there is yet another episode to come! | |
